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--Router gives internet to each connected machine, and all machines can access each other's shared files with no problem. Connections work great.

Now my (complex?) question:
I have bought a new laptop, which is much more powerful than my old one, however my old one is still powerful
And well, to not spend 50 hours working, on settuping the new laptop with all the software etc etc, I want to ghost my old laptop drive to the new laptop drive.
It will be the first time of my life I am backing up something so I want some advice on how to do it properly,

So, is it just as easy as making a ghost image, then sending over the network to the new laptop, and then ghost it into the new laptop?
Can this be done if my laptops have just one disk each?
Can I ghost directly onto a network location?
Won't it be a problem for the brand new laptop, that it will ghost on the main drive, where the 'new' but 'older (sp0)' win7 is?
Will any ghosting program allow me to ghost the 'currently in use' drive? (like restarting, and the program will ghost the drive?
Maybe I need to accomplish it in anothher way?

Also no need to worry about drivers, BSOD's etc, I can figue that out myself if I encounter any problems booting into my ghosted windows on the new laptop.
I just need to copy over the disc so I don't need to reinstall any of my games which use serials etc... and windows activation wouldn't be any problem because all the 2 laptops have windows 7 home premium stickers with keys on it.

Well that was my big question, I hope somebody can help me out.

(Please don't suggest to put my old laptop HD into the new laptop, That is not what I want to accomplish!)

Another reason why I want to ghost it:
I have tweaked the system for extreme performance, windows never hangs, it's even unable to do that, and I never ever got any BSOD on my old laptop. Also I did apply many patches such as Dreamscene and many other things I forgot, Services.msc has been optimized by me for really a long time. Would be nice to preserve all that!
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I am a software developer, so on my old laptop, there are many libraries downloaded and installed into the system, which would require again very much work.

First, technically, if Win7 came WITH the old laptop, that means it was preinstalled and you can't LEGALLY reuse that license on another machine. OEM licenses are tied to specific machines, not to the machine owners.

Second, you will have to BOOT the new laptop from something, so it stands to reason you can't boot it from the same drive that you're going to overwrite -- which leads to what tool you're going to use to do this.

I haven't used Ghost in a long time, so I can't comment on that, but I do regularly use Macrium Reflect -- and that does have an option to boot from a CD to do a Restore. So, if you boot that way, and if you can then access the drive on the OLD laptop across the network, and you have an MR image on that old laptop, you MIGHT be able to do the restore from across the network the way you propose.

However, given your statements about the great levels of customization you did to the install on the old laptop, I would be very surprised if, after restore, the new one even boots into a desktop. But ... I've been surprised before.

@Mark, if there will be license problems, I will use the license on the new laptop

and I was thinking... partitioning should work, I have managed to reduce my backup size to 124 GB, wchich allowed me to make an partition, make an image on the partition. Now I need to make a partition on a new laptop, get the windows 7 install disc and boot into recovery. Hopefully I will be able to restore the image from the extra partition to the boot partition. I will let you all know before "new year". but this can take a bit because I have many other things todo.

First, technically, if Win7 came WITH the old laptop, that means it was preinstalled and you can't LEGALLY reuse that license on another machine. OEM licenses are tied to specific machines, not to the machine owners.

Second, you will have to BOOT the new laptop from something, so it stands to reason you can't boot it from the same drive that you're going to overwrite -- which leads to what tool you're going to use to do this.

I haven't used Ghost in a long time, so I can't comment on that, but I do regularly use Macrium Reflect -- and that does have an option to boot from a CD to do a Restore. So, if you boot that way, and if you can then access the drive on the OLD laptop across the network, and you have an MR image on that old laptop, you MIGHT be able to do the restore from across the network the way you propose.

However, given your statements about the great levels of customization you did to the install on the old laptop, I would be very surprised if, after restore, the new one even boots into a desktop. But ... I've been surprised before.

This sounds really interesting ... please let us know how it goes.

1) launch minixp from Hiren's Boot CD on both computers and establish a network connection between the two PC's
2) Enables Shares and share the main drive
3) on the second pc connect to the share and copy everything onto your empty disk
4) after it's done, ,ake sure the MBR etc is good on the laptop you copy windows onto and all files. Shutdown both laptops, fire up both laptops into windows
5) on the main PC go too an elevated command prompt and use:icacls c:\* /save ProgramDataACL /tThis should backup the ACL file permissions into the file ProgramDataACL, copy it onto the other pc6) after copying it onto the other PC use the elevated command prompt on there and restore the permissions:icacls c:\* /restore ProgramDataACL

Note: where C:\ is ofcourse the drives you use for windows...after that you are done and can enjoy a ghosted pc. If you have other harware sysprep is the solution.

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